With the recent explosive growth in the use of electronic information, enforcement of copyright laws has become more difficult. The cost of the equipment required to copy digital data representing music, art, and other valuable information has been decreasing, while the capacity of readily available data storage media has been increasing. Inexpensive devices can write enormous amounts of data to digital storage media such as writable compact disks (CD-R or CD-RWs), multi-gigabyte hard disk drives, high capacity removable magnetic disks, and soon to be available digital versatile disks (DVDs). Readily available high-resolution printers and scanners bring the digitization and reproduction of graphic information within the means of most consumers. In addition, readily available high-resolution sound cards, including analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, bring the digitization and reproduction of audio information within the means of most consumers. Not only is copying digital files simple and inexpensive, the Internet facilitates unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works.
Unlike analog copies, which are always inferior to the original, a copy of digital information can be identical to that of the original, with no degradation due to copying. Millions of dollars are lost annually due to illegal but exact duplications of digital media and near-exact duplications of analog media. Because copying equipment is readily available, catching persons making unauthorized copies can be difficult. Even if an unauthorized copier is apprehended, the creator of the original document must still prove that the allegedly unauthorized copy was in fact copied from his original work and not independently created.
One approach to solving the problem of illegal copying is embedding or hiding authentication information or copy protection information within the original data. Hiding auxiliary information in original data, also called steganography, has been used for thousands of years. In steganography, a message is hidden within another object or media, so that the message is minimally perceived by an observer. Steganography is related to, but different from, cryptography, in which the existence of a message is typically obvious, but its meaning is not ascertainable without special knowledge.
Hidden data, also referred to as auxiliary or embedded data, can be used to prevent unauthorized copying by embedding in the original data commands that are readable by the copying device and that instruct the copying device not to make a usable copy. Hidden data can also be used to authenticate data, that is, to prove authorship. One such technique entails embedding auxiliary information in an original work in such a manner that special knowledge, such as a secret algorithm or code, is required to detect and/or remove the auxiliary information. The copier would not be able to remove the authentication information, and the original creator could prove his authorship by retrieving the embedded information, which would identify him as the author.
Data hiding has uses besides the prevention and detection of unauthorized copying. One such use is content enhancement, that is, adding information to the original data to enhance the content. For example, lyrics could be embedded in audio data on a CD. The lyrics could be viewed in a special karaoke machine, while the audio could be played on an existing CD player. Hidden data could also be used to associate different segments of video data with different viewer-selectable versions of the video on a DVD. For example, a viewer could select between a version edited for children or an unabridged version, and embedded auxiliary data would indicate to the DVD player which video segments to skip and which to include for the selected version.
The original data in which the auxiliary data is hidden may represent any type of information that is perceivable with the aid of a presenting device. For example, the data may represent music which is presented using a compact disk or audio DVD player, a video film that is presented on a DVD player, or an image that is presented on a computer screen or a printer.
When the combined data is presented to a user by a normal presentation device, the auxiliary data should not interfere with the use of the original data. Ideally, the user should not be able to perceive the auxiliary data at all. Unfortunately, increasing the amount of the embedded auxiliary data or its robustness, that is, its persistence to attack and data transformation, may incidentally increase its perceptibility. The degree to which the auxiliary data can be perceived without having an adverse impact on the user varies with the application. For example, in CD quality audio, a minor change from the original data might result in unacceptable audio artifacts. In video data, a minor change in a presented image may be acceptable, even though the change might be noticeable if the original and combined works are presented and compared side by side.
Several techniques are known for hiding auxiliary information in original digital data. Data can be hidden in original data as headers or trailers appended to the original data. Such techniques are of limited use in protection of copyrighted works, because the auxiliary data is easily located and stripped out of the copy, as when changing format. More sophisticated techniques distribute the auxiliary data through the original data, entwining the auxiliary and original data until the auxiliary data is difficult, or even statistically impossible, to identify and strip from the the combined data.
Most data hiding techniques that distribute the auxiliary data through the original data are computationally intense and therefore expensive to implement. Many of these techniques are based upon adding or subtracting periods of pseudo-random noise (PN) sequences with the signal to represent the auxiliary information, and these sequences may require filtering (a.k.a. shaping) in the frequency domain. The rest are based upon adding the auxiliary information to the original data after the original data has been transformed into the frequency domain, such as by a Fourier transform. Auxiliary information can be added in the frequency domain so that the energy of the auxiliary data is spread across many frequencies in a manner similar to that of the PN sequence. In addition, auxiliary information can be added to the phase of the frequency components with and without spreading the information across frequencies. Unfortunately, transforming the data into the frequency domain and/or shaping the energy of the PN sequence so it is less perceivable requires intense calculations.
The ability of users to detect auxiliary data depends not only upon the data, but also upon the characteristics of the human sense organs and the interpretation of sensory stimuli by the brain. Some data hiding techniques transform the original data into the frequency domain and embed auxiliary data in a manner such that the frequency spectrum of the original data reduces the perception of embedded data. This psychophysical effect is known as masking. The frequency distribution of the original data is used to determine preferred frequencies at which the embedded auxiliary data will be less perceptible, that is, masked. Others use the fact that we don't perceive phase as accurately as magnitude in the frequency domain.
There are some data embedding techniques that are less computationally intense and that still distribute the auxiliary data in the original data. Such techniques include amplitude modulation, frequency band elimination, distinct quantization, and least-significant bit (LSB) replacement. These techniques embed data in predetermined locations without regard to the original data and are, therefore, more likely to produce perceptual side affects in the combined data. In addition, the LSB replacement technique is easily disturbed by low level noise.
The ease of retrieving embedded data varies with the technique used for embedding. Some data hiding and retrieving techniques retrieve the auxiliary data by comparing the combined data with the original data. Others retrieve the auxiliary information using databases of the PN sequences that were originally used to hide the data. Techniques that require that a copy of the original data or a PN database be used to extract the auxiliary data are of limited use in applications in which the combined data is distributed broadly. Such techniques are useful in some applications, such as data authentication, in which the auxiliary data is retrieved rarely and only by the copyright owner.
Thus, it would be desirable to have a data hiding and extracting technique that is not computationally intense and that maintains a desired level of perceptibility and robustness, and in which the embedded data that can be retrieved from the combined data without access to the original data.